Anything that can go wrong will go wrong

Dick Murphy, the San Diego mayor Time Magazine once listed as one of the three worst in the U.S., aims to set the record straight with a new book on his tenure in office. With a title almost as long as his second term – “San Diego’s Judge Mayor: How Murphy’s Law Blindsided Leadership with 2020 Vision” – the book reportedly puts much of the blame for his administration’s failure on the city’s pension crisis and the devastating Cedar Fire. Murphy resigned shortly after the 2005 Time piece appeared, just a few months into his second term. Not all hindsight, the book also talks about lessons learned and, according to the promotional copy, “concludes with 10 thought-provoking proposals that…will make San Diego a city worthy of our affection by 2020.” Murphy will be at Warwick’s La Jolla bookstore on Oct. 6 to autograph copies.

San Diegans’ Ink: In his first novel, “Time Up,” reporter Justin McLachlan (Wired; Popular Science; San Diego CityBeat) draws from real-life San Diego for at least one of his characters. The fictitious Lynn Zora, a City Council member who’s a bit meddlesome and a staunch social conservative, bears more than passing resemblance to San Diego Councilwoman Lorie Zapf. McLachlan did some of the toughest reporting on Zapf’s 2010 campaign for council . . . The American Conservatory Theater’s Gregory Wallace has left the San Francisco theater’s core acting company after a dozen years to join UCSD as a tenured acting professor. It’s business. And it’s personal. The move means Wallace and his partner of 21 years, Old Globe PR director Jeffrey Weiser, will be living in the same city for the first time in seven years . . . A year after learning her Scripps McDonald Center to treat substance abuse would be losing its home at Scripps Memorial Hospital, benefactor Marianne McDonald is sending invitations to the Oct. 4 dedication of her new McDonald Center at Sharp HealthCare. An heir to the Zenith fortune, McDonald was inspired by a family background of alcoholism to fund the first center at Scripps with $3 million in 1984.

Wrong number: Fortunately, the county’s printed terrorism advisory to San Diegans last week – the one bearing a wrong contact number for the FBI -- didn’t go countywide. It went first to local media, and we caught the error. So Minwah Tang, whose home phone number was on the first printing, can relax a bit.

Last word: KOGO’s Chip Franklin’s explanation for last week’s freak 5.8 temblor in Virginia: “California’s so broke, even the earthquakes are relocating.”